That Time of Year Again!

Yesterday was:

OPENING DAY OF SHOTGUN DEER SEASON. 

The guys got skunked, but my husband has a deer in the freezer that he bagged during bow season. Maybe today will be better.

The following was first published on my POSTCARDS FROM THE HEARTLAND blog in Nov. 2011.
 
We live on 35 acres of woodland, surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods owned by two different farmers, a doctor, and a buffalo rancher. All of them either lease their woods to hunters or simply let anyone who asks hunt on them. My husband and his two hunting buddies hunt on our land.

That means the woods are crawling with hunters. It often sounds like a battle is being fought out there, with all the guns going off.  I don't even dare go outside unless I put on orange apparel.

So, for the next three days, I'll be cooped up in the house.  But even indoors, I worry about stray bullets hitting the house. I try not to go to town during the hunting season, to avoid the risk of getting shot as I drive down the road. But I guess if there's a bullet with my name on it, it's going to find me no matter what I do.

Every hunter out there is looking for that enormous trophy buck, but my guys mostly harvest young deer, which are the best eating.  People who have tried venison and say they didn't like the wild, gamey taste have probably eaten a tough, old buck.

Venison is our "beef."  We make hamburger from it, grill the backstraps, dry it for jerky, make summer sausage, and enjoy venison roasts and stews throughout the year.  Since the guys do their own butchering, the only cost is for the hunting permits and ammo. They fill our freezers and theirs every fall with some of the best eating you're going to find anywhere. I don't like beef, pork, or chicken grown on factory farms with the aid of antibiotics and growth hormones. Worst of all, I'm so sensitive, I can "taste" the feedlot or confinement of the commercial market animal. Deer are naturally lean and chemical free, and it's just about the only meat I'll eat.

Where I live, these beautiful wild animals breed in such numbers that they're public nuisances. Cars hit them all the time on the highway, and people have actually died from the accidents they cause.  Right here at home, they make it almost impossible to garden.  This year they mowed down two rows of sweet corn in our garden; we never got a single ear. They also feasted on our tomato and pepper plants and regularly ate the brussels sprouts and young cabbage and even some of my flowers. Just like goats, they'll eat just about anything.

A young doe will usually only have one fawn her first season. But after that, twins and triplets are the norm.  It's important to thin the herds of does, to keep the population manageable. If hunters didn't harvest a certain percentage of them every year, there would be so many, the herds would become diseased, not to mention the increased damage to farmers' crops and mayhem on the highways. So even though I dread it, I understand the importance of deer hunting season.

I always swear that next year, I'm taking a vacation by myself, to some place far from deer hunting.  But every year finds me manning the deer camp kitchen. Now I have to go bake my dinner rolls and prepare my green bean casserole and the backstraps (from a couple of young deer they got bow-hunting earlier this month) for grilling.  We always have the traditional Opening Day feast around 11 a.m., then the guys take a short nap before going back out into the woods for round two.

Well, it's been awhile...

... but as old Vallie used to say, as he sat down late to just about every meal:

"BETTER LATE THAN NOT AT ALL!" 

But that's not what I came here today to talk about.

My artist-friend Kathy moved away to Colorado today. I went to her going-away party yesterday to say goodbye, and Willow went with me.

Kathy designed my little friend Willow for me in 2012. 

BYE KATHY! WE'LL MISS YA!

Scenic Overlook

First published 12-5-11 in my blog Postcards From the Heartland.

Scenic Overlook, southeast of Galena, Illinois

 Everybody needs beauty 

as well as bread, 

places to play in and pray in, 

where nature may heal 

and give strength 

to body and soul.  

~John Muir~

Tree of Life

 "Tree of Life"  Wisconsin Concrete Park, Phillips, Wisconsin

Who will tell whether 
one happy moment of love 
or the joy of breathing 
or walking on a bright morning 
and smelling the fresh air, 
is not worth all the suffering 
and effort which life implies.  

~Erich Fromm~

Veteran's Day Salute

First published on 11-11-11 in my blog Postcards From the Heartland. 

Today is Veteran's Day, a day to remember, honor, and thank our veterans for their service to our country. This month, as a Salute to the Troops, I've been reading books about soldiers, wars, and the military. This isn't a genre I ordinarily read, but I realize how little I know about the history of the land of my birth, so it's time to broaden my horizons.  Some of the books I've read so far this month are:


ALWAYS TO REMEMBER - Brent Ashabranner
©1988 Illustrated with his daughter’s photography of the memorial and its grounds, the author tells the story of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, from its humble beginnings in the mind of a Vietnam veteran, to its prizewinning design by a 21-year-old Yale undergraduate named Maya Lin, through its construction, and dedication on Veteran’s Day, 1982.

The book also gives a brief overview of the history of the war and how America became involved in the fighting. But most of the book was about the memorial and how it brought together a nation so divided over the conflict.


OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER - Jedwin Smith
©2005 When 19-year-old Marine PFC Jeff Smith was killed in action during the Vietnam War, his family back home fell apart. His alcoholic mother blamed his ex-Marine father for his death. They divorced, and over the years his 5 siblings lost touch with each other. His oldest brother, the author of this memoir and a talented sportswriter, found his life spiraling out of control as an alcoholic trying to drown his grief.

This is the story of one man’s amazing 30 year road to recovery as he set out to avenge the death of his brother. After getting a handle on his drinking problem through the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, Smith’s first step was a visit to the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, DC. But that only made him more determined to find out how his brother died and to track down and kill the enemy soldier who took his life.

I enjoyed reading about the close bond the two brothers shared when they were children. The author gives a lot of family background as he explores how Jeff’s death affected his parents and siblings and led to his own failure to cope. I’m not going to give any more details because the ending is both surprising and inspiring.


DAYS OF INFAMY - Harry Turtledove
©2004 What if the Japanese had invaded Hawaii right after their surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941? That’s the theme of this alternate history novel that’s an action-packed and visually graphic look of what might have been.

Several storylines are woven into this disturbing epic, which continues to its dramatic conclusion in the sequel End of the Beginning. Jane Armitage, the estranged wife of an American officer who becomes a POW, is on her own when the attack occurs. Japanese-Hawaiian fisherman Jiro Takahashi welcomes the Japanese take-over of the islands, but his two sons who were born in Hawaii consider themselves true-blue American citizens. Joe Crosetti is a young man out to avenge the deaths of his uncle’s family at the hands of Japanese bombers by training to become a fighter pilot, eager to enter the war. And the strangest character of all, Oscar van der Kirk, a blond, American surfer-dude who goes on with his simple lifestyle, despite the war going on around him. There’s also a complete cast of Japanese military characters. I liked how the story was told through different viewpoints of people on both sides of the conflict. This is a meaty book that roars on to its finish and then leaves you hanging, eager to continue with the sequel.


I AM FIFTEEN AND I DON’T WANT TO DIE - Christine Arnothy
©1956 (translated from the French) When we think of civilian suffering during WW2, the Nazi death camps always come to mind, and rightfully so. This book is about a Hungarian family who had to hide for months in their smelly, damp cellar with assorted other neighbors when their apartment building was damaged in the Siege of Budapest, one of the bloodiest campaigns of WW2.
Although the book is a quick read, the images of starvation, rape, rotting corpses, and general mayhem leave a disturbing impression of the atrocities that both sides (German and Soviet) inflicted on the people of the Hungarian capital near the end of the war.


JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN - Dalton Trumbo
©1939 Earlier in the year I read how one of the best-loved American artists lent his talents to the “war effort” in NORMAN ROCKWELL’S FOUR FREEDOMS by Stuart Murray & James McCabe. Patriotism had to be whipped up if American mothers were going to give up their sons to the military, especially so soon after losing so many of them in WW1.

Rockwell painted proud pictures of patriotism and freedom, the way we’re supposed to feel when our boys march off to war. Trumbo word-paints the grim reality of war’s aftermath “when Johnny comes marchin’ home again.”

Joe is a young American soldier who wakes up in an Army hospital in 1918 to learn the extent of his combat injuries. As he fades in and out of consciousness, he dreams of home and family, and passes time with tender memories of the world he left behind. His reminiscences soften a story that is sometimes very hard to read.

This was a reread for me, and not one I was looking forward to. But I wanted to see if this book would have the same impact on me that it did 40 years ago when I was a senior in high school during the Vietnam War. After reading it back then, I was ready to run off to Canada with my boyfriend, who had recently lost his older brother in combat in ‘Nam. And I believe the book solidified my own feelings against war in general.

With all the global conflicts and wars that my country has been involved in since then, I can say that rereading Johnny Got His Gun has had an even greater impact than that first reading did.

Politically controversial since its publication between the two World Wars, it was revived and reprinted during the Vietnam War. Raw and graphic and bitterly truthful, I feel everyone should read this book, because we tend to take war for granted in this modern world of ours. If we truly knew its devastation and questioned its necessity, we’d all be beating our swords into plowshares.

A Good Horse Remembered

First published 12-8-11 in my blog POSTCARDS FROM THE HEARTLAND.

An old, old photo of my dad and me (circa 1958) 
with his beautiful palomino gelding, Ramone.  
We lived outside of Ramona, California,
 and I was five years old at the time.  
I learned to ride on this gentle horse 
that my dad frequently rode 
in Southern California parades. 
Daddy could turn us loose 
and Ramone could be trusted 
to take good care of his little rider.

Remembrance of Summer

First published 12-2-11 in my blog POSTCARDS FROM THE HEARTLAND.

 

By plucking her petals, 
you do not gather the beauty of the flower.  
~Rabindrath Tagore~

From God Alone

First Published 11-29-11 in my blog POSTCARDS FROM THE HEARTLAND.

It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, 
but from God alone. 

~William Blake~

Faceless Friends

"I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term --- meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time & effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching --- there would be a vast improvement in total output.  The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.  We must remember that a photograph can hold just as much as we put into it, and no one has ever approached the full possibilities of the medium."

~Ansel Adams



This is a grab shot that I took of a group of my friends waiting for me at the end of the tunnel that goes under the racetrack at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.

Calhoun County Pecans

First published 11-28-11 in my blog Postcards From the Heartland.  

Grandma and Grandpa received a bag of pecans as a gift, and they shared them with us. They're grown on an uncle's farm in Calhoun County (where the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers meet). Notice how large and nice they are, compared to the store-bought (those two little ones on the plate).

Peace!

"What we're thinking about is a peaceful planet.

We're not thinking about anything else. We're not

thinking about any kind of power. We're not

thinking about any kind of struggles. We're not

thinking about revolution or war or any of that.

That's not what we want. Nobody wants to get hurt.

Nobody wants to hurt anybody. We would

all like to be able to live an uncluttered life.

A simple life, a good life.

And like think about moving the whole human race

ahead a step, or a few steps."

~ Jerry Garcia

To A Butterfly

I've watched you now a full
half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! Indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless! - not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

~William Wordsworth, "To a Butterfly"

My Candlewood Cabin

First published 11-19-11 in my blog Postcards From the Heartland.

This is the cabin I rented for five nights in October for an artist's retreat. Just me and Beary. Dad was working the harvest, so he had to stay home.

I'm so glad I got to experience another Wisconsin autumn. The foliage colors were just spectacular.  Here in central Illinois, we don't have the variety of fall colors that they do farther north. Also, the hilly terrain with its dairy farms make for very picturesque sightseeing.

My cabin sat up on a steep hill, so I had to carry everything from the van up all those stairs. Halfway up the hill from where Beary is sitting (above) is the fire pit. The cabin was very secluded and peaceful. I wish I would have taken more pictures than I did, but the lighting was difficult inside. And being by myself with Beary, it was really hard to do any photography anyway.

I did do a little plein aire painting of the meadow that leads back into the valley where my cabin was located.  I also did a lot of reading, and took lots of walks with my dog. One day we made a long road trip around the lower Wisconsin River, and another day we visited a huge orchard for fresh-from-the-tree Golden Delicious apples.

Although there was no TV or internet access, the cabin came complete with a nice collection of DVD movies, music CDs, and a bookshelf of interesting books. The screened porch was nice, and the bathtub had a whirlpool.

I give this vacation hideaway a 5-star rating. It was absolutely beautiful and the hosts, Susan and Norbert were very friendly and helpful. Candlewood Cabins are located in southwestern Wisconsin, south of the town of Richland Center. If you'd like to see the inside of my cabin, as well as the other two beautiful cabins on the property, check out their website:

http://candlewoodcabins.com/

Revenge of The Squirrels

WARNING: This post may cause upset to animal-lovers and/or -activists. I would never harm a little critter like a squirrel unless I had a good reason. (I almost cry when I accidentally run over one with my truck on the road.) Eating up my garden is not a good reason. They NEED food, they SEE food, they EAT food. It is what it is.

BUT, chewing up the wiring in all of our vehicles IS good reason to get out the squirrel gun. They are stupid animals to think plastic, copper & whatever other man-made material wiring is made from, is food. Since they can't distinguish between organic & inorganic, right from wrong, their numbers must to thinned.

Selfie with bruise

I've bagged eleven now, and we've had a nice squirrel-noodle bake, but I just don't see how I can continue OPERATION: SQUIRREL PATROL when my squirrel gun does THIS to me!

And the painful bite of the tiny flying squirrel the other night (see below) is another sign to me that room should be made in the garage, for the vehicles' protection. New, automatic garage doors/openers would be ideal.  After all, that's what garages are for, right?

Service With a Snarl

First published 11-16-11 in my blog Postcards From the Heartland:

It's a good thing we don't exchange Christmas gifts anymore.  We decided years ago to drop out of that rat race. The holidays for us mostly start and end on Christmas Day when we go to Mass, and then gather with family for a feast. You can't believe how refreshingly easy getting through the 10 weeks of Christmas can be until you strip it down to the bare bones and celebrate "the reason for the season," without all the bells and whistles of brainwashed consumerism.

But even though I'm spared the hassle and expense of Christmas shopping, I still have to go to town at least once a week for groceries and to run errands. So I still have to brave the shopping mobs and the snarky store employees.

You'd think, in this age of austerity and joblessness, people would be so thrilled  to have a job, any job, that they'd at least be able to fake cheerfulness when dealing with customers.  On my end of things, I do my best to be cheerful, with a smile ready for those I come in contact with. So it kind of hurts my feelings when I'm treated like a "nothing."

Today I HAD to go to town. Couldn't put it off another day. I had library books overdue, the truck payment past due, a few things we needed from the grocery store for the long deer hunting weekend ahead, and I had a "$10 off a $20 purchase" coupon from *** that expires today.  A good time to stock up on toilet paper, half off!

At ***, I had to get out my *** Savers Card and my debit card, but I forgot the coupon in my sweater pocket. After I'd been checked out (by a chirpy, cheerful young lady, I should add) and paid up, I realized too late that I'd forgotten to use my coupon. The checkout girl had to send me to Customer Service.

Oh, no! Not Customer Service! Customer service must be the worst job in the world. I can't ever remember having a nice person wait on me in Customer Service in any store. And today was no exception.

The unfriendly young lady seemed all put out when I explained that I'd forgotten to use my $10 off coupon. I apologized and she muttered, "I'll have to ring it all up again." There were four items in my cart. Gimmee a break!

After she'd worked through the process, she shoved my money at me with a "there you go."  I smiled and said, "Thank you for your help."  Not just an automatic thanks, but a sincere thank you. She just turned and walked away.

Yes, a "you're welcome" or "have a nice day" was expected. Even a "no problem," the younger generation's version of "you're welcome," would have been nice. But to just turn her back and walk away meant I wasn't welcome.  I was just one more annoying customer she had to deal with.

I know I shouldn't let rude people steal my sunshine. But I walked out of the store feeling like I'd been spit on.

I would write a letter of complaint to the manager.  But I had to do that recently when I was shorted 5 Vicodins of the 16 my dentist had prescribed for pain after a procedure. I would have just picked up the missing pills next time I was in there and went along my merry way, but the person who waited on me neither apologized for the inconvenience nor even said thank you!

So I made a big deal by writing a complaint to the pharmacy manager and enclosing all label info so she could track down the person who shorted me, just in case that person might be in the habit of shorting folks on "the good stuff." I mean come on!  If you can't count out 16 big pills correctly, you shouldn't be working behind a pharmacy counter, right? Anyway, if I write another letter to the manager, they're going to think I'm just some cranky, old troublemaker.

So....to get it off my chest, I've blogged the daylights out of it.  And now I feel better. :o)

Mad Mom

First published 11-15-11 in my blog Postcards from the Heartland:

NOTE: Originally I posted an essay I wrote a couple years ago, when I was just about at the end of my rope. It was dripping with maternal angst, which is amusing now, not so much back then.

 




But then I got to thinking: I shouldn't be airing dirty laundry. It's not like it wasn't funny...but all mothers go through spells of feeling unappreciated, I guess,  So I'm taking down this post, and I'd just like to say:

I LOVE YOU, MY FAMILY!

. . . WARTS AND ALL . . .

Tangled Up in Blue

First published 11-13-11 in my original blog, Postcards from the Heartland. 

"Tangled Up in Blue" 24"x24" on hardboard, collage

This is one of those paintings that just didn't work out at first, but turned out to be one of my favorites. I started it when I was still taking classes at LLCC (grad. 2006).  Basically, it was just different blocks of blue acrylic paint with some texture added. Blah! 

On my sad, last day of school I was carrying it out to my car and a fellow student, who knew I didn't like it, said, "Hey, I'll take that if you don't want it." But I decided to keep it and use it as a base for a collage.

It's a heavy piece, 24" square on birch plywood. The horizontal and vertical strips are cut from woven-plastic shelf-liner. The small squares on top of the strips are 1-inch squares of watercolor paper painted different shades of blue.  There's a sort of ruffled valance across the top: the elastic band from a pair of my husband's boxers --- with a butterfly perched on it in the upper right corner. The brown rock shapes were torn from a slick Jeep brochure. There's some bits of Japanese rice paper, a very special (to me, anyway) chopstick embedded in a pile of strings (which was something that unraveled in my clothes dryer???), and four corn dog sticks, which I use as paint stirrers. Can you find the little dragon on the bottom right corner? It's a raveling pulled from a favorite pair of old blue jeans.

AN “OH-NO” SENIOR MOMENT

First published 11-12-11 in my original blog, Postcards from the Heartland.

Last week I was at the grocery store, unloading my shopping cart onto the check-out conveyor belt, like I’ve done thousands of times in my long and illustrious career as an everyday American housewife.  

I was quite proud of myself. The cart was only about a third filled, so this quick stop for a few things wasn’t going to cost me an arm and a leg.

As I was waiting with my now empty cart, behind a woman who was taking way too long to write out a check, I started rummaging through my purse for my checkbook.  I wanted to be ready with my debit card when it was my turn to pay up.

Suddenly an uneasy-queasy feeling came over me.  I knew in an instant that I’d left my checkbook at home.  In my mind’s eye, I could see it lying there by my computer, where I’d accessed the calculator to strike a reasonably accurate balance.

Great day in the morning! I’d forgotten my checkbook! What a helpless, sinking feeling to ruin my day. Since I live ten miles out in the country, it wasn’t like I could quickly run home and get it.  I had maybe $2 in change in the coin keeper in my purse.  Before the checker could start ringing me up, I was putting my items back in the cart to return them to their proper shelves.

When my son worked at the grocery store, he told me the items people changed their minds about and put back on the shelves are called “orphans,” because they are rarely put back where they came from. It was common to find a bag of cookies sitting on the shelf with furniture polish or a package of steak tucked in among the loaves of bread.

Well, I wasn’t about to just start scattering orphans all over the store. And I wouldn’t think of simply abandoning my cart of groceries and sneaking out. That’s just not right! I mentally inventoried the contents of my cart and formulated a plan to put them all back exactly where I got them. And to do it in an organized manner, so I wouldn’t have to back-track all over the store.

The experience was humiliating. I felt like a petty criminal who had decided to go shopping with no money, got caught, and had to put all the stuff back. It only took half the time to put it back as it did to shop for it, but still, it seemed to take forever.

And all the while I was trying to figure out the logic of having my debit & credit cards, as well as any cash I may be holding, all tucked into my check book.  I mean, I may forget my checkbook at home, especially if I’ve been writing out bills or balancing the account.  But I’ll always have my purse with me. Doesn’t it make much more sense to carry cash & plastic in a special pocket in the purse, as far from the checkbook as possible? Then I would never face this humiliating annoyance again.

The trip to town wasn’t a total loss, though.  I had accomplished some other important errands before I went to the grocery store.  It’s just that on my way home, my face burned red, like I was being slapped all the way back home for my forgetfulness. 

I decided not to tell my family about my misadventure.  No need to worry them…

UPDATE 10-25-14: OK. MEDIC ALERT: This is probably my first panic attack ever, in Nov of 2011.  But I've never been back to town when I didn't have some way to pay for stuff at the store either. Learned my lesson well!

Consolidation

I have three blogs, actually.  But this is where I typically hang out. One of the three is a book blog, but since I can't read anymore, I might as well pull the plug on that one.

My original blog, Postcards from the Heartland, goes all the way back to Veteran's Day, 11-11-11. There are three years of blogging there that I'd like to keep, so one of my new projects is consolidating the two blogs to THIS one. I figure I may have some new readers who will never see the older posts on the original blog (I mean who has the TIME, right?), so we'll see how this goes.

Lookin' Out My Kitchen Window

So Many Years

We attended the funeral of my step-father on Wednesday. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, because I've been kicked out of the family for over 20 years now. I was never notified of his passing: first clue that I WAS NOT WELCOME there, at his funeral.

I won't speak ill of the behavior of the others. But I did connect with my mother. We exchanged our sorries and felt very bad for all the years wasted. I read in her eyes such sorrow, fear, and desperation. She's a widow now, frail and used up from the care of her dying husband. I hope the girls take good care of her. I pray for the reconciliation of all involved, as I've been doing for years & years.

"So Many Years" poem by C.C.

I got home, exhausted (I'd attended the viewing the night before too), and wrote this poem.  It kind of puts things into perspective when you realize how stubborn pride can keep a family apart for two decades, while a grandson grows up without his grand- parents or aunts in his life.

Flying Squirrel Girl

Photo used; in public domain:
<a title="By Steve Ryan [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFlying_Squirrel.jpg"><img width="256" alt="Flying Squirrel" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Flying_Squirrel.jpg/256px-Flying_Squirrel.jpg"/></a>

Okay, this is stupid. I admit it right up front! People, DO NOT pick up a wild animal!

The other evening Katty came to the door with her latest offering, a flying squirrel. It didn't look too hurt, and it was so little and CUTE --- I lured Katty away with a can of Little Friskies, and then got a glove and went to pick up the little critter.

It scampered up my leg like it was a tree, up my back and onto my head! When I tried to grab it, it leaped to a porch post. The next time I made a grab, I came away with a handful of miniature Tasmanian Devil!!! 

It bit through the glove on my right hand and took a good bite of my nearby, exposed left hand. Then it wriggled loose and skittered away into the lilac bush. Okay, you ungrateful little ****! Good luck on your own!

But that isn't the end of today's SQUIRREL SAGA.
I was left with two bleeding fingers.  

DO SQUIRRELS CARRY RABIES?????

It was 8 in the evening, so PromptCare had just closed. I called my clinic's Tele-Nurse.  She was all excited: "Go to the ER & get a rabies shot!!! It's a wild animal; it could be carrying rabies!"

While I had been waiting for Tele-Nurse to come on the line, I had googled the subject.  I found the very knowledgeable blog  of an ER nurse of over 30 years experience, who in his spare time is a "squirrel rehabilitator," who has been bitten countless times and never even had an infection --- heck, my little squirrel should have been incarcerated in a maximum security unit! He reassured everyone that: 

#1: Squirrels do not carry rabies. They don't associate with animals that do, and if caught by one, they'd be eaten. 

#2: He's never seen a case of human rabies caused by a squirrel bite.

That was good enough for me, but then the Tele-Nurse comes on and starts up with the ER & rabies shot!

So, instead of driving 15 minutes to the nearest ER, get checked in (with a $25 co-pay & billing to my insurance company), and then have them turn me away because YOU DON'T NEED A RABIES SHOT! --- I called ER and asked, "Do I?"

The woman who answered the phone put me on hold while she went to find out.  She came back with good news. No, the CD protocol (we have a lot of those lately due to the Ebola scare) was NO RABIES SHOT NEEDED FOR SQUIRREL BITES. Squirrels are not rabies carriers. She'd even checked with a doctor on duty that night.

WHEW!

Silence...

I journal, I blog, and lately I've been writing poetry.

 

SILENCE

A poem by C.C.

In other days you filled the silence

With your herky-jerky exuberance,

Big dog with a bull-whip of a tail.

Silence, your dog tags jingling.

Silence, with the scratching and scraping

Of your front paws

As you shot your favorite ball 

Backwards from out between your hind legs.

Silence of your goofy scuffle

To get your toy back under control again.

Silence, as you contentedly chewed up one ball after another, chomping your way through a succession of expensive pet toys. 

Silence, at night,

with background lapping of water in the dark.

Silence with a sigh,

As you circle, and down you lie.

Silence, except for the worrisome sound

of licking, licking,

forever licking,

Perpetually grooming ---

Handsome dog with too much hair.

Oh, the silence

Is truly silent now.

The same road noise, bird song, 

squirrel scold, cicada screech...

But oh, so silent

without my friend at my side.

Deep silence since a good dog died.

  

Beautiful in Any Language

PEACE & Get a Life!

PEACE & Get a Life!

TO MY FELLOW 

EARTHLINGS! 

First Morning in Taos

"FIRST MORNING IN TAOS" acrylic on board 12"x12"

 The name of this painting used to be "Last Spring" and it was a picture of an apple tree in blossom, painted on a one foot square piece of masonite.  I painted it in the spring of 2013, after a bad winter with my fibromyalgia, when I thought this would surely BE my last spring!

I don't know why I painted the entire board sky-blue first.  This isn't my usual routine or the way I normally paint. And when I was finished with the apple tree, I didn't like it at all. It was way too heavy-handed on the blossoms, so I put it away.

Recently, while preparing for an art show, I found the thing and a light-bulb went on in my head! This was the embryonic beginning of a Taos painting, started a whole year before I even thought of going to northern New Mexico. The sky-blue background is so fitting for Taos, where the skies can be achingly blue at times.

My first morning in Taos, I woke up and stepped out to a beautiful early spring snowfall. I grabbed my camera and walked out into the ancient apple orchard across the acequia from my cabin. Wet glops of snow covered every blossom and stuck to the tree bark. By noon, the snow had melted.

So all I needed to make this a "Taos painting" was to add snow to the tree trunk and ground. And an authentic Taos painting was born: 

"FIRST MORNING IN TAOS."

War Zone - America

[NOTE: Photos borrowed from news sources show recent violent, racial rioting in Ferguson, MO.]

The Second Coming

by W. B. Yeats (1919)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

PRAY FOR PEACE!

Looking for Something...

TO CHEER ME UP!

I'm feeling all lonely and blue today. I've been alone all week while Rich does the haying. He said yesterday was going to be the big Hay-Day, but the weather turned off cool (HEY! I'm not complaining!), so the hay didn't dry down like it usually would on a hot summer day. I'm hoping they get it baled and put up today, so he can have the 4th off.

I'm trying to get ready for my upcoming art show August 1st. There's so much to be done, that should have been done months ago... it's overwhelming.

So I took my camera outside and caught some flowers to cheer me up. (nice try...)

NEW Painting --- My Chimayo

El Santuario de Chimayo, NM  (16x20 acrylic)

This is the beautiful little chapel in the mountains that I made a pilgrimage to in April. It's the first painting of my new series "Two Weeks in Taos."

(If it seems a little tilted to the left there, it's not.  Just bad picture-taking.  I'll try to get a better shot & replace it soon.)

Hakuna Ma Tatas

Last Saturday we had the Curves/Avon 5K Walk for Breast Cancer Awareness.  I'm unable to walk across the yard without hurting myself, so I couldn't join the gals. But I took my camera with me and became their unofficial photographer. We had so much fun for a good cause.

New Painting - "Lake Watch"

"Lake Watch" (Ring-Billed Gull, Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior)

Here's my latest painting.  It's from the "Postcards from the Heartland" series. It's called "Lake Watch." It comes from photos I took while on a road trip to Lake Superior in 2007.  I started painting it last year, but had to put it away because I was having problems with it.  Now that I'm working on my "Two Weeks in Taos" series (Hey! I'm painting again!  Yea!), I decided to dig it out of storage and finish it.

The Dusty Trail Home

Early Sunday morning, April 27th, I left Taos the way I arrived, with snow. Charles, at the B&B, was kind enough to send me on my way with a brown-bag-it breakfast of two bran muffins and a banana.

I dreaded trying to get down out of the mountains in the snow, but the roads weren't bad at all. And I was, after two weeks, an old pro at mountain travel. So no problems there.  Once I was down on the plain, I kept looking back sadly at the mountains receding in the distance--- how I wish we could live there!

Coming across the emptiness of the Oklahoma panhandle, I found this windmill.  I saw so many windmills on my trip to Taos, and I love having windmill pix in my photo source files --- so I wanted at least one picture of a windmill on my way home.

Most of my trip out of New Mexico and across Oklahoma and Kansas, I was driving in a blinding dust storm! That really slowed me down and made for tense driving. I stayed at the Swedish Country Inn B&B in Lindsborg, Kansas again, that night. Nibbled at the complementary Swedish breakfast (just didn't care for the food) the next morning, before the last leg of my trip home. Before I left town, I saw this wild and crazy "art car". Wonder what the owner looked like!

I only stopped at one place in Missouri to sightsee. Have no idea where this was, but I saw a sign for "Pony Express Way Station, 3 miles.  So I went to check it out.  A lonesome place if I ever saw one!

And finally, it was home sweet home at last. When I left it was still winter grays and browns.  When I got home, spring was busting out all over. 

Beary was so happy to see me! Little did I know that exactly one month later he would have to be euthanized.  This was one of the last pictures I took of my Beary Boy.

And so wraps up my TWO WEEKS IN TAOS. It was an amazing adventure, and I hope someday to return.

Goodbye, Good Friends

On Sat. April 26th, I just hung around the casita, packing and resting. I dreaded that two day drive home so much.  And I just hated leaving the magical place that is Taos. Most of all, I hated saying goodbye to my new friends, the Jordans.

On Thursday evening the four of us had gone to see another movie.  This time it was "God's Not Dead." It's the story of a college student who takes on his atheist professor (Kevin Sorbo) in a debate about the existence of God. Very moving and thought-provoking film, produced by Willie & Korie Robertson. I hope the Duck Dynasty people will continue to produce good family films like this one.

Saturday evening, the Jordans took me out to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, the very rustic and delicious Ranchos Plaza Grill, next door to San Francisco de Asis Church in Rancho de Taos. 

We'll continue to keep in touch, I'm sure. (Why didn't I think to take a picture of them? I took enough pix of everything else!) Jerry and Marilyn and Harwede are the most welcoming and genuine people I think I've ever met. It's been many decades since anyone made me feel as special as they did.

My Chimayo

The actual purpose of this trip, that I made to northern New Mexico in April 2014, was to visit this holy place of spiritual renewal and healing: El Santuario de Chimayo.

I was very near Chimayo during Holy Week, but I was warned by several long-time locals to avoid going during that particular time. This tiny mountain village in Northern New Mexico is known as "the Lourdes of the United States," and thousands of pilgrims overwhelm the sacred place on Good Friday every year. I don't do well with crowds.

There were still plenty of visitors the afternoon I was there, but I was in no hurry and was happy to work around them for a couple hours. Above is a very long covered walkway with a very long prayer wall full of pictures.  There was still room on the ends to add more pictures, so I left a photo of someone dear to me to be prayed for.

My photography was one long prayer that afternoon --- that's how stunned I was at the beauty of this place. The only time I wasn't snapping pictures was when I put my camera away in my bag and went into the little 200-year-old chapel to gaze at its simple splendor and to pray (no photos allowed).  I scooped up a small tin full of "tierra bendita," the holy dirt from the spot where a crucifix was once found buried, dirt which is supposed to have healing properties.  Many, many crutches and canes have been left behind by those who claim to have received miracle cures of their infirmities.

When I was ready to leave, I stopped for one last prayer at this outdoor shrine to Our Lady of Sorrows, one of many such prayer sites scattered about the beautiful grounds of the chapel.  I experienced the deepest peace imaginable as I finished my prayer and started the long walk back to my truck. 

Suddenly, looking about, I was utterly amazed!  I was the only person to be seen on the entire grounds of the sanctuary (except for a few people at the far end near the entrance gate). The parking lot only had a few cars left scattered about.

I walked back along the Santa Cruz River, taking one last look at the bucolic communal pasture on my left and the seven huge stone crosses that commemorate the Seven Days of Creation on my right.

So I made my visit, I completed my pilgrimage, on the last "free" day of my two weeks in Taos, Friday, April 25th.  The following day I planned to rest a lot in my casita, to prepare (mentally & physically, for the long drive home) and pack my truck for an early departure, Sunday morning, the 27th.

I'm filled with joy even now, a whole month later, at the spiritual peace and renewal that I received at Chimayo, and that I was somehow able to capture and bring home with me. I'm glad I waited til the last possible day to see El Santuario de Chimayo. 

May its blessings and beauty forever remain close to my heart.