Wordless Wednesday: Quiet Lady

From Mystic Seaport

Our World Tuesday: Mystic Seaport

Saturday morning, we headed with my nephews to Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, Connecticut. This is a maritime museum that focuses on New England's whaling past. Mystic is the annual field trip destination for just about every kid in Connecticut. When I was in elementary school, the 19th century seaport museum was a pretty modest affair. Now, though, the place offers all kinds of hands-on activities for kids and museum displays that include Connecticut's military maritime history as well as its commercial one.

From Mystic Seaport

The dimly-lit figurehead exhibit is, and has always been, my favorite.  The sculptures are romantic and dreamy, capturing a bit of the soft side of those old-time sailors.  (Of course, the stitchery decorating the Navy whites and the handmade doll furniture do that, too.)

From Mystic Seaport

The rescue station was new to me,  That display included a life boat, an all-metal rescue capsule a la Jules Verne, and living quarters (below).

From Mystic Seaport

The Joseph Conrad is one of my nephew Alex's favorite ships.  The interpreter aboard that 1921 schooner finally answered his question of why the wheel is so big and to the back.  We learned that you stand to the side of the thing to navigate so you can put your back into it, if need be.  We have enough trouble walking through electric doors, so the need won't be arising soon.

From Mystic Seaport

The trees atop the main masts indicate the vessels that will be in port on Christmas.  The Charles W. Morgan Whaleship, the 1841 whaling ship from New Bedford, Massachusetts that has been at Mystic since 1941, did not have a tree on it because it is undergoing restoration work.  We were able to walk on the main deck of this last wooden whaleship in the world and see the painstaking work being done, however.  We also walked amid the piles of logs being milled and tested for possible use in the restoration.   Mystic is an amazing place, and the hard work that made it possible, then as now, is palpable there.

Our World Tuesday

One Single Impression: A Fool's Paradise

From Mystic Seaport

The world ends and begins
With light that has taken the shape
Of a swan gliding toward me
On a quiet autumn river.

The swan and I:
Everything.


One Single Impression

Today's Flowers: Color Goes, Color Comes

From Mystic Seaport

Saturday's adventure involved a trip to Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut, with my daughter and nephews. The weather was beautiful--which is to say a bit unseasonably warm--and made for happy tourists and happy photographers. (There's nothing quite like not being able to feel the shutter button under your finger.) We had a wonderful day. The Seaport was decked out with Christmas reds and greens, but Mother Nature was still happy enough to go about in her various shades of brown.

From Mystic Seaport

Today's Flowers

Book Review: 'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is at heart a story about justice coming to the mean girl.

In the case of this story, mean girl Hilly Holbrook is the self-appointed empress of Mississippi society in the early 1960s. Like any other bully, she wields power because she nobody challenges her when she calls the shots. Hilly is as manipulative as she is selfish. The only area of her life in which Hilly does not distinguish between black and white is in her desire to run lives. She runs everybody’s—and woe betide anyone who crosses Hilly. She is merciless.

Stockett’s story looks at life in Jackson, Mississippi, through the eyes of black maids Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson and the college-educated farmer’s daughter Skeeter Phelan, who moves in Hilly’s social circle. Stockett’s fictional women tell their stories at the same time they tell the story of the South during the dying days of the Jim Crow era.

The three women’s stories wrap round each other as they describe their experiences of the same people in Jackson. As their story-telling takes on a singular purpose, it embraces the stories of more and more women—black and white. Their lives are indeed integrated.

Eventually, this town in the Deep South bumps into a new era that refuses to leave it behind. As the Civil Rights Movement takes shape, so does the desire for genuine freedom take shape in the minds of these women—black and white.

The women in this novel who free themselves from the trap of old ideas remind the reader that freedom is a choice, and it must boldly be taken.

The Help is a beautiful book.

View all my reviews

Blog Your Blessings: Making the Team

Life is so rich and beautiful that I often forget how rich and beautiful it is. The blessings come one after another, even when they put me back in the gym.

Which they do because my daughter made her school's basketball team. So did three of her friends--including her best friend, who is my favorite among her friends, who has been her friend forever, who is the very best and not just because she eats my cooking and says nice things about it.

Making the team puts me back in the gym with yet another opportunity to learn what off-sides looks like as my daughter does her thing on the team. In hear early Parks & Rec days, she was a little ball handler who moved up and down the court like a confederate runner so that the girls who were brawny enough to score did. Nobody expected her to do anything, but she caught them not expecting anything every time, and away she went. I had bleacher butt, but it was fun.

As she took up art and other things, I thought my butt would be spared the bleachers. No such luck. It's a good thing for all of us. Now I don't have to wonder about what to do on the weekends, and she doesn't have to worry about being bored. My daughter and three of her friends have penetrated the inner sanctum of the cool girls. Cool will never be the same. Neither will my butt. But Della got what she wanted because she worked for it. The big change is feeling good. We'll take it.

Skywatch Friday: A Fire Burns

From Jun 27, 2011

This photo was an experiment in shooting through a screen.  The experiment consumed more time than taking the screen out would have.  Of course.  So there's a graph-paper effect sitting on top of this last lingering look at daylight one early summer day.  (It's the End of the Land.)

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: Sleep, the Fragrance of Morning

From November 20, 2011

From November 20, 2011

Wordless Wednesday

Our World Tuesday: Some of Main Street, Woobury

We took Clyde for his Sunday constitutional along Main Street in Woodbury.  I figured that would be best for us after a walk in the woods and watching a few tree-sized tree limbs come crashing to the ground in the still air.  Just a little too scary.

From Jun 7, 2011Wordless Wednesday

Woodbury is known for its myriad antique stores.  This champagne-colored dress is a beauty, I think.  This headless woman has been standing in the window for a while now.  She'll find the right headless man someday, I hope. 

From November 20, 2011

This police officer moved with a muffled step as he was making his way from behind the police station.  He's so enthusiastic about what he does that he forgot to put his uniform on.

From November 20, 2011

Mr. Tacky the Hater lives right on Main Street in our town.  He's always got a painted sheet of plywood propped up on the lawn telling us he to depose or run out of town this week.  His hatred is such a part of who he is that he has actually draped Christmas lights over the board.  Icicles.  The irony was as sweet as his taste in art is bad.  Though he clearly a righty, he has a somewhat liberal sense of what is beautiful.

From November 20, 2011

We enjoyed the light and shadows on this well-constructed picket fence.  Leave it to the Methodists to get a fence up right.  In the distance is a beautiful old home that was once the church's parsonage.  Those were the days.

From November 20, 2011

There are burial grounds all over Woodbury.  In fact, there is one in the elementary schoolyard, so kids shoot hoops amid their ancestors and mine.  The Isbells are buried in the graveyard in the background.

From November 20, 2011

Here are the pharmacy, barber shop, and hardware store the way they're done in this bucolic little wonderland.  Once upon a time, I would have been bummed about the power lines in the foreground in the shot below.  No more.  The sight of power lines that are actually up is a beautiful thing to me.  

From November 20, 2011

Our World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Vulnerable

From May 7, 2011

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Seeking

From May 7, 2011

Now as then:

No hide-and-seek:

Too great

The fear of being

Found.

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: Moonlit

From August 13, 2011

I came across this quote of Helen Hayes in mybirth year and liked it very much.  It made me think of the things I've come to realize the thousand and one times I have walked this beach in every kind of light.

Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it. (Helen Hayes, in Roy Newquist, Showcase, 1966)

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: About to be Satisfied

From Late Summer Wildflowers, Connecticut

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all. (Jawaharlal Nehru)

Wordless Wednesday

Our World Tuesday: Got Your Back

From November 13, 2011

This time of year in Connecticut is (usually) a time I find myself betwixt and between staying outside as much as possible and enjoying the light and that fading summery warmth of autumn in New England and staying inside and enjoying a soft seat and a good book.  Last weekend, there wasn't much light to be found, and what little there was cast light on our catastrophe of a week ago.

From November 13, 2011

Walking around with that much tree ready to fall to the ground will, as my dad says, make a believer out of you.  There are as yet many trees with limbs snapped and shredded and hanging by a thread. Some of our trees are so massive, it's hard to imagine anyone but Mother Nature taking care of the problem.  The way things go around here with our superlatively inept governor and power(less) company, it will likely be up to her to solve the problem.  She has her own way of making all things new--like this birch tree, for example.

From November 13, 2011

Later in the day, Adella and I went for a walk with Clyde in the hope of finding some wildlife to observe and to photograph.  Apparently, they found the soft seats, too; we were on our own.  Dell was tired after a sleepover at her best friend's house, so she took a rest on a rock for a bit.  Clyde had her back.

From November 13, 2011

So it goes.  If the sun couldn't lift her pretty head for very long today, she is no less there, and the day was no less beautiful.  Shadows are pretty, too.

From November 13, 2011

P.S.:  Many thanks to the utility workers from Maine, Oklahoma, Alabama, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and possibly every other state in the union for helping us when we could not help ourselves in Connecticut.

Our World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: To Start Anew

From August 21, 2011

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught. (Georgia O'Keeffe)

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Hourglass

Hours pass

And pure white sand

(Once a ragged mountain)

Sifts soft and fine
Through your hands.

You whisper,
And it's gone.

One Sigle Impression

Blog Your Blessings: Veterans' Day

From August 24, 2011

The other day my daughter's social studies teacher assigned the class the task of writing three questions for Viet Nam veterans who would be visiting her class on Thursday to mark Veterans' Day. That was cool except for a few obvious things: 1. They are studying the American Revolution, so Viet Nam was slightly out of context. Therefore, 2. they had no background information from which to generate the questions. This created 3. a lack of sensitivity toward and awareness of the kinds of questions that are appropriate as well as (Dare I say it?) logical.

I assured my daughter  we had the material on the bookshelf to help her understand something of the situation those veterans would have faced. We'd read up a bit, and she would not ask bozo questions and set the free world back by 60 years. 

This conversation took place on a hill in the dark as we walked Clyde for his evening constitutional. Apparently, the universe was listening in, because it delivered to us our neighbor, a retired officer who had served as an Airborne Ranger on more than 140 deployments over 11 years. I mentioned the assignment to this gentleman, and he did my daughter's homework right there on the side of the road and encouraged her to suggest that her teacher provide kids with some parameters so that they don't ask a question that might be a PTSD trigger or a just plain bad question. As it turns out, this man had the same teacher for social studies back in his day. That teacher's son had served in the army.  (It seemed to me as I listened to him that we all know each other in a real and extended way, that we are indeed connected and should therefore be committed to each other.)

In a matter of minutes, my daughter had a sense of what it is to serve and be understood or misunderstood and to be left to deal with it, to do what you're told as a matter of honor and to leave the politics to other people in the (wild) hope they might have your back. And if they don't, the courageous and decent guy coming down the road does.

What to do on Veterans' Day? Reflect and be grateful. That's what our neighbor said after many years of service.

My heartfelt thanks go out to those fine folks who serve this country through military service. 

Skywatch Friday: On Fire

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice. 

("Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost)

Wordless Wednesday: Family Portrait

From November 2, 2011

Wordless Wednesday

What Was Connecticut Light and Power

Connecticut Light and Power--commonly known as CL&P--has been renamed after Storm Alfred.  It left so many Connecticut residents fending for themselves for days upon days with the only resources available that, well, the public utility now reflects the public's resourcefulness.

One Single Impression: Birdie

All day I watch the birds:
Ospreys feed their young
On thrashing fish I could not hold in two hands.
Great whites
Feed on whispers
They claim from the intracoastal waters
That rise and fall like the beats of a heart.
Pelicans take everything the waves offer
And leave me believing the world started
Yesterday.

I watch all of this from the front porch
And think of the adage,

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,

And though I realize the point of this
Is that what we have is worth more
Than what we have not,

That life is greater than any dream,

These birds show me
That the great life is a dream.

Birds know this.
They survive.

One Single Impression

Today's Flowers: Bittersweet and Then Some

When I went for a walk this morning, I had the opportunity to enjoy frost. A November frost is a beautiful thing that glazes the world with evanescent diamonds that dissolve into dew as the sun rises and warms everything within its reach. Frost highlights the delicate lines as it follows the myriad curves that give shape to every unique wonder in the natural world. Frost slows the clock and bids the earth rest that it might flourish again.

From November 5, 2011

From November 5, 2011

The world is beautiful.

 Be well.

Today's Flowers

Blog Your Blessings: Ed at the Diner

We've had catastrophes around here that have left me waxing lyrical about the amazing ways nature heals its wounds and that people bridge the gaps that these catastrophes create with kindness and warmth.  And all that.

Not this time.  To wax lyrical now would be to paper over the yawning gaps in the story of why so much of Connecticut is shivering in the cold tonight, a week after a freak storm, because Connecticut Light and Power has failed to restore power.  To wax lyrical now is to forget that our governor, Dannel Malloy, who has the unfortunate habit of treating public employees as freeloaders and criminals (simultaneously), did not pull it together after Hurricane Irene and come up with a realistic and effective disaster relief plan that would keep the citizens of this state out of harm's way at the next natural turn of events.  

When the lights went out last Saturday, they stayed out for countless thousands of us because Connecticut Light and Power (CL&P) had not paid the countless out-of-staters who bailed us out after Irene.  Why come back?  We ask this question of the governor who is not huddling by the fire, is not preparing meals by the fire, does not sleep by the fire, does not sleep in everything he owns to stave off hypothermia....  And we know the governor cannot answer the question because his own actions have shown that he has no respect for the citizens of Connecticut--and less than none for the citizens of this state who seek to serve the state by working for it at the state or local level.  I am talking about prison guards and teachers, basically. I am speaking up for myself as a teacher.  If Governor Dannel Malloy thinks we're trash, why should the guy in Chatanooga, Tennessee, who works for the electric company, take the ride?  Following the governor's logic, we're not worth it.

There's no waxing lyrical here.  But Tuesday's coming, and we who have turned blue in the cold of a neglected Connecticut whose highest elected officials treat us like beasts will feel the difference when polls close and the math is done.  For those whose day of reckoning will be another election day, we of the frozen toes will be there to remind you that you do not own us.  Quite the other way around.

But enough. I don't want to sound like one of those ultra-conservative AM radio haters.  I will now wax lyrical about Storm Alfred and the hell it delivered to Connecticut.

On Monday, when cell service was knocked out and land lines were equally useless, I went to see my parents in Newtown to make sure they were OK.  I stopped at the diner to get them some coffee, and there I met a man named Ed H. who used to work with my dad in the phone company (when it was called The Bell System).  He mentioned that most of  Newtown was out of power and that he was stunned by the lack of presence of the CL&P on the roads because when he worked for the phone company, it wasn't like that.  He said, "Guys helped each other out.  One guy would always help another guy, and we were visible.  What I liked was being a part of that and being a part of something that helped people."

"What I liked was being a part of that and being a part of something that helped people."  Feast on this quote for the meal it is.  Savor every word.

This gentleman spoke with an old-school Connecticut accent and described a time I could remember, when the phone guys got together to share meals or go for picnics together or to paint houses.  I remember as a kid going out with my dad on a Saturday or two and watching him climb telephone poles to restore service to someone or countless someones.  Being able to do that required a combination of strength and intelligence and commitment and self-respect.  I say self-respect as I type this at 11 p.m. because I think to take your daughter in the truck and have her watch you do what you do is to say what you are doing is so well worth doing.

And here's an aside.  It's the bologna story.  About the time my dad installed phones in the house of a family whose youngest members fried bologna by dangling it into the toaster from a fork.  Dad took those kids to a diner for a meal.

That's what you do.  You feed people.  You take care of them.  Governor Malloy, for whom I voted but now wish I hadn't, this is what you do.  You hold yourself accountable, and you take care of people.  Hand-wringing does not count.  You show up and you feed people and you keep them warm.  As a matter of pride and a sense of decency, you do it at every cost.

My dad went on to become a union representative and then to move through the ranks of the union to become its president for his own sake as well as the sake of his colleagues.  He believed he deserved to reap the benefits of his labors, and so did his buddies.  It was that simple.  He worked for people he knew and loved.

Were it only that simple for the governor.  He might believe the people of Connecticut deserve to enjoy the fruits of their labors in the form of warm homes and stoves that create warm food.  We're not asking for much.  We want the homes we work for to be homes we can live in as we pay our bills and our taxes in good faith.  Return that faith, governor.  Hold the electric company accountable.  Serve us that we might again be Connecticut.   Be worthy of Ed at the diner.  Be worthy of my father.

Is This Your Dog?

Dear Two-Legged Living in Roxbury, Connecticut, or Thereabouts, and Missing Your Dog:

If the dog in the above picture is your gentle and loving Vizsla, you are no doubt wondering why he is on my couch snoring the evening away after an afternoon of exploring the countryside and not on yours.

He is here because my daughter and I came across him this afternoon loose on South Street in Roxbury, where he was flirting with an elderly, voiceless collie on the other side of one of those electronic gates bearing a Warning We Have a Dog (So There) signs meant to keep me and the Avon Lady away. The collie wasn't much interested in this debonair bachelor, but he persisted. We stopped the car and called to him, and he climbed right into the car like he was waiting for the chauffeur to finally show up. I pulled into the collie's driveway and called for a human, but none came.

There were utility trucks everywhere in this ridiculously gated, camera-laden Beware of Dog section of town, and the situation was dodgy for an unassuming dog the color of fallen leaves to be loose in the middle of the road. So we took him in and off we went to the town hall, where the town clerk and his son did their best to match him up with the dogs on record there. No luck.

I told the town clerk I would take him home, and I gave him my number in case anybody in their right mind should come along looking for this beautiful, gentle animal. Then we took him to my aunt, who knows everything about dogs. She could not place him.  She and my uncle are willing to give him a home because they could see he is a nice dog. 

If this dog has shared the road with you and you can tell me why he was all alone in the middle of one today, I'll bring him to you. I know what it is like to lose a dog by way of a silly mistake. He is warm and safe and well fed and stealing my heart as I type, so if he's yours, please call the town clerk of Roxbury ASAP before I stop being an honest woman and keep him for my own. He is a love, and he should be at home.

From Drop Box

Update (November 4, 2011, 1:30 p.m.)  The sweet dog we had been calling Floyd for the day he was in our lives was previously named Seamus and is back with the two-leggeds who previously named him.  The reunion comes thanks to the help of the "animal control" folks in New Milford and a dear friend whom I had emailed with the scoop and who made some phone calls for me.  The reunion also happened thanks to the cell phones that made communication possible in a state that is still largely in the dark thanks to the ineptitude of Connecticut Light and Power.  Della and I returned Seamus with heavy hearts to a man who brought neither a collar nor a leash to keep him safe.  I gave him one of my (long departed) dog's collars.  

I asked the man how long the dog had been loose.  He said he saw he was gone when he got home at 3 p.m. the day before.  He said the dog uses a Doggy Door but had never before tested the boundaries.  He had not been wearing a collar because, heck, the invisible fence wasn't working and it wouldn't keep him in anyway (ahem, even if it could still hold a dog tag).  The man was stunned because, he said, Velcro Vizslas don't wander; they stay with their people.

So, where were their people?  I had to wonder if this pup had been ditched in the house while the humans sought heat and light elsewhere.  During his day with us, we had called Seamus by the name of Floyd, and he was good with that.  He was also good with the multiple cans of Alpo we fed him.  I joked that this dog was slumming it by eating Alpo.  Not funny:  "He was slumming it; he's never eaten dog food in his life."

If we find Seamus in the road again, he will return to his new life as Floyd.

Skywatch Friday: Dreamin' On (Dirty Lens and All)

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust)

From August 17, 2011

Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it.
(Dianne Houston, Take The Lead, 2006)

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: Baby It's Cold Outside

Wordless Wednesday

Ditched by the Power Company

I have not been around this week because our part of Connecticut got whacked but good by Storm Alfred ( I think.)  We are prowling around the lower rungs of that heirarchy of needs, trying to maintain a body temperature of 98.6 degrees, finding warm food, staying warm at night....  We have been without power since Saturday because Connecticut and Connecticut Light and Power have seen fit to do very little about the situation.  It seems they sealed our fate when they did not pay the bill to the out-of-staters who helped with the last crisis.  So we got what we paid for.  Sad thing.  Be well and happy, one and all.  See you soon.