Matriculation

 

Last Monday, the 22nd of August, I became a student at Southwestern Illinois College. This move has been planned (in planning) since April. I attend classes on the Belleville campus three days a week. Over the years (so many years) I had taken a class here or there but there was never any plan. Now I have an advisor and I have a plan. The highlight, so far, has been the people. My fellow students are fun, motivated. The people who work on campus, in support roles, are all so helpful, and the instructors are interesting and honestly seem concerned for their students. Of course, the librarians rock. One observation I have is that most people don’t chat between classes, they look at their phones.

During the first day of one class, while we did quick introductions, one woman said she liked all music “except country!” and the young woman next to her said, “What about Dolly Parton?” The consensus in the room was Dolly Parton is her own genre. I loved that.

We are the Blue Storm, our mascot is the Himalayan Snow Leopard.

My sweet Bambina sent me the bookmark and Post-It notes.

In my first paper for Sociology I wrote about poverty. I told Jerry I used Nick Saban, University of Alabama head football coach, in an example. He told me that Nick Saban is a saint and that he makes miracles.


The man makes an annual salary of $11.7 million and shills for Aflac. I got a "good job" for equating wages with worth and citing another source outside of our reading. 

No football coaches were harmed.

This is just to say

Thursday while I was working on my computer I looked out the window to see a squirrel climbing down from a bird feeder on the deck and another squirrel skirting the edge and then bam! a groundhog acting nonchalant: the Return of the Native; the Prodigal Groundhog returns; Ord the Obscure. I immediately tapped at the window and then headed outdoors to see what was happening. The flat cat was nowhere to be seen (though the squirrels seemed a bit cranky). 

Speaking of cranky the past two days have seen a sharp decline in bird activity. Song is missing in the morning and the whole neighborhood feels off. I notice that at the end of the cul-de-sac one of the trees is dying. I was trying to figure out if my neighbor was praying as he kneeled beside it or weeping. I can't blame him either way, it was a nice tree. Are the birds out mourning the tree as well? They're welcome to do this in my yard, a little mournful song in the lilac bush would be okay.

Here's a bored looking polar bear from the Saint Louis Zoo taken on our anniversary. We went to the zoo for people watching and to get out. This guy just seemed to be enjoying the cooler weather that day. Every once in a while he'd flex a mitt and look around. We definitely saw more action from the humans.

Delights

Today there were two seemingly insignificant occurrences that made me happy. The first was getting an email from a former colleague from Belgium. She quit working at the library on the NATO base to become a woodworker. A total career change, something she was excited for, and I was very happy for her. We also had a shared appreciation of sheep. At the time I had some Converse sneakers with sheep on them – my sheep shoes – that’s how we got to talking about sheep. She had plans to go to a Faroe Islands where there are more sheep than humans. One of the last emails I sent to her before we left Belgium was about people in the Faroe Islands wanting Google to film sheep view for Google Streets. So, I was so delighted this morning to see her email with pictures of donkey nannies from Italy, the donkey’s are used to carry lambs. I love the pictures and the story and the fact that she thought of me.

The second happy thing was just a preying mantis (just a small one about an inch and a half) that rode on the hood of our old CRV for about 15 miles. After one stop it moved from the top of the hood and took refuge behind the windshield wiper. When we got home, I told it to behave and not start anything. And as a mantis will do it turned its head to me and sort of waved.

Cleared and a need to know

In boot camp we learned the classifications of materials. How having a clearance didn’t mean you got to see a document, you also had a need to know. In every command I was at, especially as we handled classified material, we trained and trained and trained again on how to handle, store and destroy classified materials (if it could be destroyed or declassified/reclassified). How to account for everything. I’ve seen the panic, the oh f*ck, I’m going to throw up, I’m going to jail look when something seemed to be missing.

I was in Naples when the John Walker spy case broke. Our communication network was compromised, Navy wide, and we all had to shift how we received and entered information. The workload went up tremendously. The chance of error went up. We were still in the throes of the Cold War, Uncle Ronny was still growing the military, the years of Greed is good was coming up not only as a movie quote but as mantra for defense contractors and the GOP. We turned people out of houses and those who needed a safety net and ignored disease and hunger. And it created the very shallow, shadow that was elected by electoral votes: the Don, the Cheeto, the Insurrectionist in Chief. The man who right this moment should be on a plane to Guantanamo. If he wasn’t holding those classified items to sell he was holding them to blackmail the United States of America; monetization was part of the plan, that’s the Orange one’s M.O. He’s already done more damage than Walker could have dreamed of, and he has done it in the light of day with the support of a lot of people who had no problem with the grift, the hate, the bigotry, the racism, the misogyny, the fascism, the meanness, the petty small-handed, intellectual amoeba (sorry amoebas) of a human…

Here’s a metallic green sweat bee leaving its nest. We spent many minutes this morning looking at one another before I was able to get a clear picture.

         

Also in the yard lately is a Cicada Killer Wasp, which is a gruesome guest but fascinating. Another being I have spent many minutes watching and then researching (The Atlantic has a wonderful article from 2013). 

(Photo: Chuck Holliday)

And here’s a little poem I found in my notebook from April:

How light catches leaves
then feathers, how catkins
reach out to touch her, how the breeze
stifles its endless giggling
to listen to her wings,
how the clouds pull back
the curtain of light open further.

The birds dive, alive with each turn
each wingbeat lifting heat, settling dust.
How a flutter of wings is like a book
shuffling shut. How the book and the bird
are both things that can ease thought.

How the tree shudders
when she leaves, how she is grateful
in return. Tree and bird. A need.
And the listen, birdsong, leaf music,
a breeze hum symphony.

A liquidity moving *

A finch sits on the sunflower’s open face
as though this globe is its world.

I’ve been working on a poem for Jerry for our anniversary. Two days ago, I noticed that a lot of the poems I’ve written for him over the years (and we have been together many years) have featured birds, mentioned birds, or had a metaphor leaning heavily on birds. Well, they lend themselves to poetry; you borrow from beauty you see and know. And then there are birds.


So many birds fill the poems I give you as though the even fluttering
of years is actually wingbeat, soft whispered flutters brushing close,
hurried songs in the long days.

Then yesterday I took a pause and was working on something for the Bambina’s birthday (no spoilers, you may keep reading 💓) and discovered a few flat cat pictures on my camera and also this gorgeous finch on the sunflower’s open face.

This was taken a few weeks ago. The finch was not giving up the flower and gave me time to get my camera, change lenses, and move about the yard, what a pro. A surprising moment. And I’d forgotten it. But not the movement over the world.

Imagine living/like this: flower to flower in the bright/day.

Yesterday a squirrel was out in the same location molesting a bird feeder, gnawing into the feeder and then squeezing into feed. Jerk.

                                         
I get no respect in the yard since I relocated the flat cats. The jays know more peanuts were available when Olive and her brood were here. The squirrels knew that the bird feeders stayed almost exclusively in the backyard and were much easier to access. The cardinals, oh the cardinals, didn’t sit outside the bedroom window in the morning and complain.

I miss them too.



Ada Limón , the new US Poet Laureate, has a lovely poem that features a ground hog, I love these lines:

“…a liquidity
moving* all muscle and bristle. A groundhog
slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still
green in the morning’s shade. I watched her
munch and stand on her haunches taking such
pleasure in the watery bites.”

Such pleasure in the watery bites -- ah! The poem is called Give Me This and is available on the Academy of American Poets website.

Well, this is one of the things I’ve been doing between downpours and heat waves. Writing, and reading poetry while also thinking of those who have been flooded and damaged and lost. Watching COVID deaths go back up. Trying to stay safe and keep others safe as well.

Thanking Kansas.

Wrapping some small gifts for the man’s birthday which happens very, very, very soon and watching the birds. Making notes. Listening.