Beautiful and light

The past few days while we’ve been out on our walk, out rambling about town, Monarchs have been floating by. It’s migration time. I get easily distracted as we go, watching the butterflies. And the squirrels hoarding acorns, the hawk hoarding squirrels and the one flat cat I’ve seen a couple of miles away from here. And then the one house on Vine always has cats hanging about so there is the cat fix. And we do have a new black cat in the neighborhood; she is definitely someone’s pet, and she is beautiful and shy.

We went from temperatures in the high 90’s on Wednesday and Thursday (add humidity ☹) to 60° on Friday. Ah. Today was a bit of a boomerang but next week it looks like Fall weather as we head toward October. Which is where I bring in the Saint Louis Cardinals baseball team, as they move toward October and post-season. Not that I watch baseball anymore or follow it very closely (the game is too slow, the season too long and there are too many teams. Mediocrity is rampant.). That’s not the important thing, the important thing is the team’s Albert Pujols. Yesterday in Los Angeles he hit career homerun number 700. In my record book this puts him in the number three spot for career homeruns. In the official record book, he’s at number four. (I don’t count Barry Bonds. He can have the number one spot with a giant performance enhancing asterisk! And for the record, Pete Rose should never be allowed in the Hall of Fame.) 

But, Albert Pujols, at 42, his final year, is having a great season. I will cheer for him every time. I was happy to see him get that hit. I loved his smile and the post-game interview with his family. 

Beautiful and light as a monarch.

(Photo: Gary A. Vasquez, USA TODAY Sports)

 

I imagine myself one of these orange
angels, rising on the first cool breeze
close along the tree’s crown where I say
nothing. I do not worry about my name
or feelings or even if I will make it the thousand
miles home. I’m a puzzle piece, content to fit
here. Here. In the sun my whole-body glows
with a music, there are a many songs today
covering the world. None matter
that much. As long as we journey
and sing, some of us will survive.

Look up

 Wordsworth wrote, 

 "I wandered lonely as a cloud
  That floats on high o'er vales and hills,"

A fitting couplet to repeat today on Cloud Appreciation Day. It's also the day to add a cloud shot to the Memory Cloud Atlas. A poet friend sent me the link and I have shared it as well.

I was slightly disappointed this morning when not a cloud was in sight. The only object that made me look up was the silly gaggle of geese that were landing on a building on campus. From the ground just their necks and heads were visible like reeds blowing in a gentle breeze and then much honking would arise and another one or two joined the rave. I knew my first class was on the third floor in an adjacent building so went up to see the geese across the way.

There is a perfectly good pond out there and people are just coming to class, wouldn't this be a good time to just get in the way and block access? Was the novelty of looking down without flying fascinating? I enjoyed pondering about them. 

As I was leaving after my last class I shot these clouds hanging around. 

Well, be safe. Look up. Ponder a new thing.

Ask the Chief

Some information on what Goat Locker means. "No other armed force has a rate or rank equivalent to that of the United States Navy or Coast Guard. Granted that all armed forces have two classes of service, enlisted and commissioned, however, the United States Navy and the Coast Guard have the distinction of having four (i.e., Enlisted, Bureau appointed CPO, Bureau appointed Warrant and Commissioned.) This makes the title "Chief" even more distinctive.

The "Chief" is required to be a fountain of wisdom, the ambassador of good will, and the authority on personnel relations as well as the technical expert. "Ask the Chief" is a household word in and out of the Navy and Coast Guard. Onboard boats, (submarines) ships (haze gray and underway), Naval Air Stations and Coast Guard Stations the quarters (berthing/lounge) area for Chief Petty Officers is referred to as "The Goat Locker", hence the name of this site."

So it was just natural to get the sign after we set up the Goat Locker in the basement.  Goat stands for Greatest of all Time.  (Don't tell anyone (Jerry) but the chief community can be a little "culty"...🙄)

This place

I was thinking today about “The Man in the Hole” with the wall-to-wall coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s death. I was wondering if instead of the seemingly sad story of his isolation and aloneness if he had perhaps been chosen to be the face and last representative of a bygone time. Maybe he was chosen so that the rest of his people could be left alone. In the story of his death it says they found him covered in feathers which made me think of A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, just the feather thing, the mystery (a good excuse to reread the story).

Anyway, school is going well. In geography I had to write a paper about whether there is an end to geography and does place matter. I had a great time answering these questions. Our reading example was a CNN story about the Babushkas of Chernobyl. A few years ago, I read Svetlana Alexivich’s book The Chernobyl Prayer: the Chronicles of the Future so the article was not surprising to me and something I had already thought a lot about. And does geography matter? I compared it to the question do libraries matter in the age of the Google. I may have thrown in Chief Joseph and my uncle Lowell. I definitely ended on a poetic note. I’ll see if the argument was effective next week when I get my grade.

Here are some things that have been going on around here: a wren was sunning like a cat, stretched out on the deck railing, rump in the sun.

Yesterday I had to rescue a small rabbit from the window well outside the Goat Locker (Jerry’s office). It’s quite deep and this is the second time a rabbit has been down there, a quick hop over the daylilies plunges you down. So, I played a benevolent Farmer McGregor and sent the bunny on its way.

Mist over the lawn, the soybean fields
moisture hanging in the air
enveloping morning. This is what
summer is like here. Isn’t 99% humidity rain?

Only cicadas sing now
their last love songs.
The birds are prepping
for journey – or winter.
Holding their voice
for other activities. Except the Blue Jay
loudly proclaiming: Here I am!
This is mine! Here I am!
Look at me, look at me!

This is where I had lunch on campus today.

Be safe, be kind be on the look out for lost animals and angels.

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.