Lunch with Ruth

Ruth, my daughter's trophy mother-in-law, and I went to lunch at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens last Friday. I stopped to admire Melvin's jade tree. I thought I would have to look carefully to find it, and it's right in the lobby!

Then I joined Ruth in line for tickets to the orchid exhibit.

Look what was in front of me!

The whole front entry was islands of orchids.

Ruth says, when the exhibit ends in a month, she will have that most purple orchid.

(So would Laura if she saw it.)

A display down a hall way. The theme is "Cuba". 

Ruth said the unnaturally colored orchids have been fed colored water. A long discussion of watering orchids ensued among all the visitors.

This island of orchids also included dresses from a Cuba/orchid themed contest. Ruth reaches for the "keeper" from among the dresses.

Now, the fun.

We went into the glass room, to look at tropical plants, birds, butterflies, ants, bugs...an ecosystem in a glass room.

I lifted my camera to take a picture of glass and mist and a tall plant. The view was foggy.

I tried again. I seemed to have on the lens cap.

I looked. The lens was totally fogged.

Why not. I took many pictures through the steamed lens, and blew a lot of light through them after I downloaded.

Three butterflies.

Bromelid.

Orange butterfly.

An astounding blossom.

Back at floor level, I dried the lens and shot normally.

The glass house is small paths through an overwhelming amount of tropical growth.

Three frogs. 

Phew. The desert, and prickly things.

Two tortoise.

A lizard, with an attendant.

The previous lizard was stolen! Ruth said the thieves were taped, but not caught.

Now a docent is by its side at all time.

It sees us!

The case for driverless cars

I live on a dead end country road that has no more than ten homes. Some traffic in the morning, some in the afternoon. Up at the county road, our exit to the world, a different story. It’s busy much of the day and heavy often during the day. Big trucks; semi tractor trailers hauling freight from point of loading or unloading, up to a major interstate. This piece of Ohio has grown up around us in the last thirty years.

This afternoon I waited to get out onto the county road, off to get Laura. I had to turn left. I watched at least one semi approaching from the right, and some pickup trucks and cars. From the left, a small black pickup truck, with another car behind. All the traffic from the right cleared and I looked back to the left.

The black pickup was creeping. Some impatient traffic was piling up behind. I looked right. Oncoming traffic a couple streets down. What to do about the black pickup at left, a thousand feet away and barely moving? I turned in front of him. I realized the driver’s head was on his chest. Was he dead? I looked into the cab as I passed.

You guessed it. Texting. Completely, totally obvious to the road around him. He was close to a stop on Akron Cleveland Road, impatient drivers behind who were not clear to pass, and him with unfinished texting to do. This was not the classic left hand holding phone at eye level, eyes darting occasionally to the road. This was total focus on phone held surreptitiously below steering wheel level.  So no one would notice?

As I drove on down the road, it came to me. This is why driverless cars are being built. These millennials are something else, aren't they.  

Missing the point, what?

No visible cell phone.

Alberta clipper

An Alberta clipper (also known as a Canadian Clipper) is a fast moving low pressure area which generally affects the central provinces of Canada and parts of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions of the United States. Most clippers occur between December and February, but can also occur occasionally in the month of November. Alberta clippers take their name from Alberta, Canada, the province from which they appear to descend, and from clipper ships of the 19th century, one of thefastest ships of that time.

Average trajectory of an Alberta Clipper

This is straight from my other friend, Wikipedia, who follows Google as my hero. With apologies to Jane.  I would never call it a Canadian Clipper, or even a Canada Clipper.  Actually, I like Alberta as a name.  My friend Linda’s mother’s name is Alberta, and the clipper lives up to that name.  Our Alberta ran a dairy farm in New York, raised kids, fed the hired hands and took over the family fertilizer business when necessary.  Alberta is ninety five.  She could do it all over again tomorrow, if asked.

As the Alberta clipper heads down to Ohio, it passes over several Great Lakes.  By itself the clipper is not a great snow maker, perhaps a couple of inches.  But over an open great lake, it picks up moisture.  Over two or three great lakes it picks up a great deal of moisture.  Lake Erie is the third great lake the clipper passes over on its way to my house, if that is it's destination.

Now I live on top of a ridge that marks the division between the Lake Erie watershed and the Ohio River watershed.  The Cuyahoga River, two miles down the hill north and west of me, flows into Lake Erie.  I remember learning in geography that it rains along the west coast because storms come off the Pacific Ocean, slam into the Cascade Mountains and drop all the rain on the west side.  Great American Desert on the east side, broad brushing it.

That’s what happens here in northeastern Ohio.  All that moisture hits the watershed ridge and drops as snow.  And, where squalls persist, to quote one weatherman, even more snow.  All accompanied by leaden grey skies and blustery winds.  Akron, Ohio, ten miles south of us, may only get a dusting.  Alberta hit the ridge and dumped the snow up here

.

Alberta Clippers mean take the kids to the bus in the morning, and maybe even wait there for them at night.  They mean stay home if you don’t need to go out, stay warm, read a book or get out some sewing.  They aren’t all that bad.  And, they may be over for the winter.  We’re half way through the month this week.

Alberta Clipper Five

       

I took my camera to work today, to take a picture of red dry hydrants for Lisleman. They shone like rubies in Tuesday’s sunshine.  I’m not expecting to get back a day like that any time soon.  They’re just dull looking dry hydrants, with Alberta Clipper Five closing in.

At the end of that post, Jenny commented that hydrants in her town are painted to coordinate with local landmarks.  That is a magnificent idea and I think Nick and the kids at the art academy might see these as the Loch Ness monster.  Or anything.

Because dry hydrants would make a rather dry post I thought I’d just go down to the corner and take another picture to show you another story, when I heard the heron—and looked up and found him. One more wing flap and he was over the cedars.

This poor golf course is the winter home of deer, Canadian geese and mallard ducks.  It’s a beautiful golf course, thickly fertilized all winter.  I thought about cleaning it all up every spring and asked a friend who managed a golf course in New York.  She went wild.  Don’t even talk to her about it.  And, the goose crap is toxic.

So, there are shoulder to shoulder deer and geese on the golf course all winter.  Come spring, only the geese are left.  Several years ago I realized the geese nested around the lake.  Then the little yellow fluff balls would appear, running about like cartoon ducks.  And the hawks swooped down and took them away.  One morning the hill would be yellow with goslings and at day’s end I could watch the last gosling whisked away. 

I stopped taking that road into the valley once I saw the geese nesting; breakfasting hawks were not a pretty sight, even if they are endangered red tail hawks.  I was even more angry with the stupid geese who couldn’t be bothered to go across the street and use the marsh for a nursery.  You don’t even want to know how they watched their broods lifted off without raising a wing, then sauntered around the lake as if nothing happened.

Then two years ago the golf course left the low corner at the road unmowed, and a little marsh sprang up on this side.  I watched for geese nesting on the lawn, and there were none.  I resumed using Truxell to get to work and back, keeping my eye on the lake and the corner.  And sometime in June those half grown geese began emerging from their private marsh.  It didn’t improve my opinion of their parents’ IQ’s, but at least they knew what to do with this marsh when they found it.  Here it is, waiting for spring to turn into the goose nursery.

And then I telephotoed up the hill, past the marsh, onto the golf course.  Yes, that is goose, duck and deer shit littering the ground under the cedars.

And, Alberta Clipper number Five is swirling around outside.  While we will get only two to four inches this time, I’m thinking about New England and New York taking the two to four feet pounding.

Lest we forget Tuesday.  Golf course with deer track.

A rare sort of winter day

Yesterday, between Alberta clippers number four and five, the sky was clear, the sun brilliant.  I took my camera for a ride.

Every morning I go down into the valley to go to work.  My favorite route is Kendall Road.  Its name changes to Truxell half way down; all our roads have first names and the Truxell farm was on this road.  Charles Truxell was a trustee in the sixties. Hayward Kendall donated a huge tract of land to the state to be used in perpetuity for park purposes, and named in honor of his mother, Virginia Kendall.  It was a state park when I grew up, and now is part of the national park that ate Boston.

The road in the summer is canopied over by the tree leaves.  My summer pictures of driving through a tunnel of deciduous trees have not been spectacular.  But the reason for the canopy is so evident in the winter months I got successful pictures of their bones.

I pulled in and out of parking lots the entire length of the road.  Beside Kendall Lake, there are trailheads for The Ledges and for The Octagon rock trails.  Every parking lot is lined with quarried rock; there were two major quarries in the area up to the twentieth century.  One quarry now is The Quarry, a summer swimming hole for kids, and the other is Deep Lock Quarry, maintained by the Metropolitan Park Service.

When I left home with the camera my intent was to take pictures of shadows The blazing blue sky wound up preempting shadows, but here is an interesting tree.

This is one of many creeks through the glacial ravines that empty into the lake.  There is another little water course behind my house that travels to the lake.  About twenty years ago, with township zoning only slightly more lax than it currently is, the landowner up the hill behind us decided to clear cut his woods.  Nothing I said to the township or the EPA resulted in a stop work order.  At the next big rain storm the stark naked hill of course descended by the tons into our little creek.  Smothered our apple orchard, too.  When an EPA fellow finally appeared he shook his head and said “Lady, you have a helluva mess here.”  Jan and I went toe to toe with the Amish chainsawers and saved trees on our property.  That’s a good story for some time.

Eventually the hill washed entirely downstream to the lake and silted it in.  It had to be drained and dredged a couple of years ago.  It didn’t have to happen.  Here’s the lake from the parking lot, and a deer trail.

Many of the shelters at the trail heads were WPA projects that became state or local parks, and now part of the National Park.  I love the stonework and am happy it’s being maintained. Steps to a trail and an interesting tree.

At the end of the road I turned at the golf course and came back.  The tree is at the end of one of the lakes on the golf course, and the lakes have what the fire district calls dry hydrants.  Along the road there are two pipes that terminate in the lake and can be attached to the tanker by a hose at the working end.  If there is a fire in the district, godforbid, the tankers take on loads of water at the lake and go fight the fire.  For years the hydrants were black.  One day one of my favorite fireman, Nick, put down a receipt for paint and brushes on my desk, and went out and painted them red.  They still look spiffy.

I made my U turn to come home, and was obliged to take this picture:

Almost all year long our narrow township roads are clogged by spandex warriors.  We clean up their stinking sports drink bottles.  Often we can’t get out of our own roads to go grocery shopping.  And we even have to tell them how to behave.  Another story.  I guess I’ll be in business for awhile.

E-Z Pass Go

Wickipedia

We have a great system of highways available to us here in Northeastern Ohio. Back in the days I travelled to art shows to make a living we were eight hours from most big cities east of the Mississippi.  Friends in upstate New York would speak enviously of some shows we travelled to.  “Man, I wish we could do that one.  But it takes two days to get there.”  It does, if you live in New York State. Or Maryland.  Or Virginia.

Tolls on toll roads were never fun, however.  Once I left home with only Tom and Jan’s purple velvet Seven Crown bag of euchre change and a credit card between myself and Philadelphia at the other end of the Pennsylvania turnpike.

Somewhere in the ‘90’s the New York Thruway began E-Z Pass.  A transponder on the windshield talked to a receiver in the booth and deducted the toll from a prepaid account.  It seemed such a good idea, but I just didn’t get around to it.  The Tappan Zee brought me to my knees.  One Friday afternoon there was one E-Z Pass lane, all the rest were cash.  On Sunday evening there was one cash lane off the island, all the rest were E-Z Pass.  When I arrived at the George Washington, another toll bridge, at midnight, and still seven hours from home I knew the next thing I would do.  Get an E-Z Pass.

E-Z Pass is brilliant.  Slow down approaching the toll booth, the gate is down, the red light says STOP.  Roll slowly through the lane, the gate goes up, the green light announces E Z PASS GO and zing, you are through and gone ahead of all those fools who don’t have E-Z Pass.  Simple things kept us smiling.

E-Z Pass spread.  Reaching for the change in the ash tray one day, and seeing a new gate on the Garden State Parkway:  E-Z Pass.  Yes!  Then E-Z Pass got us through Pennsylvania all the way from the Ohio line to Breezewood.  A few months later and E-Z Pass took us all the way to Philadelphia.  I came home once on the West Virginia turnpike and found E-Z Pass had come over the weekend; I could slip through another gate, E-Z PASS GO.  It worked on all the toll bridges in New York State.  It worked in Massachusetts. Big change in a few short years.

After I retired I turned in my transponder. I travelled west to visit Ann in Wisconsin, and those toll booths on the Tri-State in Illinois were like a trip back to the dark ages.  Then one day, I-Pass.  For anyone who still had an E-Z Pass transponder, no more toll booths.  As I didn’t, I ordered my own I-Pass.  In their redesign of the Tri-State Tollway in Illinois those civil engineers gave those of us with transponders up by the rear view mirror half a dozen lanes and blue lights looking down, able to read our signal at fifty five miles an hour.  Cough.  Cough.  I subscribe to keeping up with the traffic, slightly over seventy for most of us.  I can log onto my account and read my history at will.  Those blue lights have never missed me going by.

When Indiana added E-Z Pass they called it I-Zoom.  Actually a joke, but what can be expected from a privatized toll road.  It’s a lane and gate system, but it works and gets me through Indiana.  So, the dots are connected from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from West Virginia to Illinois.  But, wait…

What about Ohio?  It was years behind.  In fact, for some time the Ohio Turnpike commissioners felt they could conquer twenty years of E-Z Pass history with a little card called Ready Pay.  Stop at the booth and insert your Ready Pay card. Unbelievable.  My transponder actually cut half an hour or more from my trip to Wisconsin to visit Ann, but to visit Linda, less than sixty miles away, I still carried loose change in my ash tray.

I only used the ash tray for change, but it did collect road dust, and the occasional coffee spill.  On one return trip from Linda’s I had only the exact toll and it did require prying some pennies up from the bottom of the ashtray.  I tilted the toll into the outstretched hand and took my foot off the brake.

“I can’t take this money.  It’s dirty.”

I held out my hand and the money rolled back.  I took my foot off the brake again and rolled a few inches.

“You haven’t paid your toll.”

I tilted the change back into her hand.  She opened the gate. 

I like to think I helped expedite E-Z Pass on the Ohio Turnpike.  Ohio now issues transponders and we can E-Z Pass Go through any toll booth.  The Ohio Turnpike charges those with an Ohio issued transponder forty cents per month for the privilege.   My sister didn’t believe that until she saw it on her monthly credit card statement for her transponder.  I suggested she turn it in and get one from New York, or Illinois.  She probably won’t.

Election day tomorrow

Here in Ohio our usual May primary election has been jerked up to March for the primary (haha) purpose of making the state a factor in the Republican presidential primary.  I would be offended, but for the fact I’ve done some  rule gerrymandering myself, in my day. 

In a household where you didn’t declare your politics or the length of your pocketbook, I was nevertheless thrown into political analysis in the Kennedy/Nixon campaign.  Like many teenagers short of 21, John F. Kennedy would have received my vote.  That might have been the end of political awareness for me, except my Dad said, “If he’s elected, I guarantee soldiers with guns will be marching in the street within two weeks.”  The dinner table discussion lasted all through the fall. When I deemed myself and my candidate the peaceful winner in November, dad smiled like a Cheshire cat and sprung the truth on me on November 11^th, when soldiers with guns did march in the streets.

Four years later I was old enough to vote, and knew Nixon could never have my vote. Hubert Humphrey did. Four appalling years later, I took the democrat ballot at the primary and cast a vote for Eugene McCarthy.  Tilting at windmills, and it felt good.  For the next thirty odd years I didn’t touch those partisan ballots; I voted Independent.  It doesn’t get a party ballot in Ohio.  It didn’t stop me from being known as a registered Democrat and getting all those phone calls that followed me from Cuyahoga County to Lake County to Summit County.  Four or five address changes and two or three phone number changes and they still called me to promote a candidate!

I took a partisan ballot in 2006 when Taft was the outgoing Republican governor and there would be a vigorous race to replace him.  I was especially concerned about the Republican primary.  One candidate would be Jim Petro, whose work in various elected state offices was solid.  His primary opponent was Ken Blackwell, whose stand on individual rights, among others, pretty much petrified me. 

It was just common sense to me to help select the best Republican candidate, so I pulled an R ballot in the spring primary, and cast one for Jim Petro.  He lost.  Fortunately, Strickland, the Democratic candidate, defeated Blackman in November.  He put in four good years and was narrowly defeated in the last bi-year election.  That R ballot also doubled the phone calls to the house at election time!

In the last presidential primary, 2008, my principles again led me to select a partisan ballot.  This time, a D.  Hillary needed me. My little precinct had lost most of the workers I had known for the last decade, but I thought nothing of that as I faced the unfamiliar row of election workers and said I would have a Democrat ballot.  I was challenged!

A rather young man quite sternly told me I was a registered Republican! and could not take a Democrat ballot.  This rather old woman faced him down, along with some obtuse rule about changing affiliation in Ohio.  To him and the entire room I announced I was an Independent voter who occasionally found a need to make my primary vote really count.  For George McGovern in 1972, for example.  In last spring’s primary, to help select the best Republican candidate, for example.

“I don’t need to hear this,” the stern young man cut over me.  “Yes you do, young man. I’m here today to make my vote count, and I will do that when you give me a D ballot.”

He withdrew his challenge and gave me the ballot I requested.

If you don’t vote, you don’t count. 

John Husted's voting sticker.   He's Ohio's Secretary of State.   Actually, it's pretty neat.

Where’s Betty

I worked for a couple of years at a small manufacturing company.  I was secretary to a vice president for a while, then moved out to the front reception area where I typed invoices and answered all the phones, as well as the previous secretarial duties.  All that occurred because there was an ownership battle going on, but way down the line we just did our job and got our paycheck.

It was the job where I met my best friend, Carol.  She was a temp, so concerned about arriving on time that she arrived an hour early the first day.  She walked around the building, wound up at the shop door and the foreman brought her through to wait in the lobby, where I found her when I unlocked the front door.  The shop foreman was so impressed by Carol’s work ethic he went to the president (it was a small company and a long time ago) and said Carol was the kind of person the company needed; she should be hired.  And, she was.

Working in the reception area in the front lobby I got to know Betty the woman who handled personnel and was the purchasing agent. Her office opened onto the lobby. She was much older than I; a motherly kind of woman.  I always was up for fun at a job, and Betty was plenty of that.  One time all the men had gone out for lunch, the president driving.  They weren’t gone long when a bad storm threatened.  In those days most cars weren’t air conditioned, and all windows in the parking lot were down, against the hot summer day.

Betty came into the lobby hollering for those of us left to help her roll up car windows, which we did, moments before the big storm broke and poured cats and dogs.   When it passed Betty took us all out again to wind down the men’s windows.  When they returned from lunch and checked their car interiors, they were puzzled.  They asked.  We all denied closing their windows against the storm.  That was fun.  But it was Betty at her mildest.

One day one of the men came down the hall, whistling.  He had a hand full of papers and stuck his head in Betty’s door to tell her something.  Popped his head back out and asked me “Where’s Betty?”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t see her leave.”

“Well, tell her I’m looking for her.”  He went back to his office.

Half an hour later, Betty called to me from her office to come in for something.  I went in and was curious; I hadn’t seen her return.  “Oh, I was here all along.  I didn’t want to talk to him so I hid under the desk.”

 Picture

Guidance, the help page and a dummy blog

You all know it has snowed on my house for more than an entire day.  I could have taken a very cold winter wonderland walk, like Elaine.  I could have been laid up, like Delores (ouch, and get better soon!).  Actually, I did something equally as challenging and painful.  I spent the day coming to grips with my blog.  

Kay explained to me a week or so ago how to follow a blog that doesn’t have a place to “join”.  Right up at the top of bog pages is a line I never saw: Follow Share Report Abuse Next Blog.  I was only after the Follow function, but confess I stayed up late one night, hooked on the Next Blog function.

Lisleman and Ms. Sparrow both wondered how I came by Cup on the Bus.  Not a mystery to me, but obviously time to clean up my act.  Lisleman mentioned I could make and use additional pages.  A long time ago Delores explained how I could add a Blogs I Follow list, but I couldn’t figure it out and abandonded the attempt, frustrated.

When I announced earlier today I would do housekeeping,  Delores told me to be careful, and that struck me as so sensible,  I set up a dummy blog to practice on.  I named by new blog See how to do it, and learned how to make additional pages, how to get the blogs I follow gadget in the right place, how to list the blogs I read, how to label my blogs!  Google should give me a certificate for passing remedial blogging.

So, I have a tab where curious folks can see how I named my blog.  I have labeled all my blogs so curiouser folks can click on something interesting and see all the blogs about that. And, one day Ellen commented she liked a story, but wished for a program to follow the characters.  So, I will use my new skills to make a third extra page titled Cast of Characters.  Or maybe just Characters.

Posting in haste; Jan just announced supper:  Burning Love.  I’m grateful to all of you for everything.

You can't be talking to me!

A psychology class

When I started college, I went year round, and graduated in three years.  I fitted a number of “core requirements” into summers, to get them over in six weeks.  Buildings were not air conditioned way back then, and in retrospect I believe every summer course I took was held in the hot, hot garret of an old, old building.  These abbreviated classes generally were two to three hours in duration, depending on the credit hours.

A psychology class I took one summer was held in an amphitheater style class room on top of the chemistry building.  The room was hot, stuffy, somewhat malodorous; the sun glinted on brass railings from windows high under the eaves, the professor droned, a tiny figure telescoped down there on the stage, writing his points on the board, occasionally turning to face us.

Every student in the class showed up the day of the anticipated mid-term examination, and learned the exam would be the following day, as the professor had another topic to cover.  He ignored the collective groan and ploughed on.  As he droned and pens scratched, subdued whispering and some rustling commenced in the upper rows.  A young man was using the opportunity of the prof’s turned back to descend a few rows, ducking adroitly into an end seat or behind the back of a seat when the professor turned toward us.  We knew he was heading for the fire escape door, open wide for any hint of breeze.  We all were rooting for his perfect escape, repressing the urge to cheer, or even breathe loudly.

The professor caught the mood, and the rustling and surveyed the class between writing bouts. It became a cat and mouse game.  The professor wrote, then whipped around.  Nothing.  He asked “Is something the matter?”  Nervous titters.  The next time around he checked his fly.  The class still hung on, with difficulty.  The escapee was a few rows from his goal, which included a few feet across the edge of the stage occupied by the professor. Dead silence except for chalk and the voice talking to the blackboard.  The student went through the door and down the stairs.  The room burst into laughter and applause.

This time the professor tugged his zipper to be sure it was firmly in place before demanding “What is so funny!?”  We didn’t tell him. Social Psychology in action.

Statistics and other proven facts

Apropos of nothing, my dad would drop statistics into a conversation.

You can rely on luck—half the time.

Half the married people in the world are women.  That probably remains true.

If you invite 400 people to your wedding, at least 35 of them will have been born on the same day.  He had variations on this, like the probability of 100 people in a room having the same birthday. Odds increased dramatically for days of the week. 

Nine of ten people turn right when then enter a store.  Having exhibited in many large expo centers, this is absolutely true. 

A pint’s a pound the world around.

A drip a second is eight gallons a year.

Eating raw vegetables consumes more calories than are contained in the celery stick, carrot, etc.

Janice and I each read a book once and wish we could remember the title.  It was light reading; its heroine solved mysteries and often used “proven facts” to reach her conclusions.  Thanks to my dad I knew facts were proven.

But, one “proven fact” I learned in the book whose title I cannot remember is:  If you put your heel in your elbow, your big toe will reach the end of your wrist.  There was a time I could actually prove this fact.  It’s from Michelangelo’s perfect body measurements and comes in very handy when I’ve wanted to make socks for someone as a surprise.  I’ve just had to steer the conversation around.  Although I know a Marine whose toe ends almost at his fingers.

Pasha and the goose

There always were multiple cats at our house.  Even when we swore to NoToe there would be no other cats in his life time, there was Purrl, the reason NoToe ran away (the last time) and stayed away several months. 

Pasha was the cat who was not a cat.  Quiet and demure.  Scotty was the patriarch when she arrived.  He fostered her, tutored her in mouse and chipmunk.  Unlike Scotty, Pash was tidy.  She left her evidence in the woods, not at the back door.  If questioned she would have denied any rodent encounters.

Other cats came and went over Pasha’s eighteen years of looking down on, over and past the other cats who ate from the same bowl.  I believe she fostered Xena, Warrior Princess just as Scotty had done for her.  But Pasha befriended no cat and certainly claimed no place in the hierarchy.  She was a free spirit who occupied my chair and let me sit in it with her come evening.

Pasha’s humiliation was Willie, a foundling cat determined to claw her way to the top and completely unable to deal with the cat who was not a cat.  Willie ambushed and attacked Pasha at every opportunity.  Pasha disentangled herself and walked away.  To her dismay, occasionally Pasha had to find a human to separate the Willie cat from the Pasha cat in order for Pasha to walk away.

Pasha’s joy was the goose.  She was only four or five when I bought a goose down comforter.  When she came to bed that night her eyes were wide with delight.  She couldn’t snuggle enough.  Thereafter she abandoned the chair in order to sink and luxuriate in goose depths.  When I took it off late spring her dismay was evident.  She only came to bed at night, not during the day.  She slept at my feet, not my shoulders.

The next fall I opened the cedar chest lid and pulled out the goose.  Pasha appeared from nowhere, running, and was on the bed on the goose as I shook it out and spread it out.  Pasha never ran, Pasha glided.  Except when she ran to greet the goose.  It was our late fall ritual for many years.

The comforter is as warm as it ever was, but it’s been a long time since I looked around for Pasha when the goose comes out.  Purrl sleeps there now, during the day. He doesn’t even know it’s goose time until he shows up.  Just not the same.

Angus, Joanne, Pasha, the goose.  February, 2001

Old cemeteries and schoolhouses

I’ve fielded a couple of cemetery calls at the township recently.  One was a call to the wrong cemetery, so I redirected it, and the other call was to ask permission to tour our cemetery.  I’m only the person who answers the phone, so I directed that call to a cemetery trustee, but, be still my heart.  They asked permission.  Unlike young hooligans who think a township cemetery is a fine place to push over old headstones and burn frogs alive.  I tell myself the universe answers that kind of disrespect with swift and sure vengeance we just don’t know about.  Their cup won’t be on the bus, times infinity.

A publically dedicated cemetery is an important piece of becoming a community.  In the beginning there were family plots on farms, but as populations grew and fledgling governments formed and land changed hands, there might be no one left to maintain family plots, or even know who rested there.   Communities came together, formed governments under the laws of their state or territory, made arrangements to take care of the poor, the schooling of children, the burial places of their dead, the grazing lands of their cows and sheep. The symbols of these achievements, the old cemeteries with barely legible markers, the old school houses, the town square or village green I see as markers to the future.     Respect for the past and present are paving stones for the future.

When I visit Ann in Wisconsin, I have a view of two old symbols.  A township cemetery and a one room schoolhouse, directly across.  The cemetery is always neatly mowed and trimmed, just like the cemeteries cared for in my township.  I talked to the mowers one day and learned that cemetery had ceased being used when a larger one was built in a nearby city. The township continues to mow it, but is not responsible for further care.  Witness to this is the long row of headstones separated from their foundation, but stacked in a neat line against the trees.  It’s not important the stones and the bases are separated; it’s important the markers are still displayed and trimmed about.  The fellow told me they’re pretty sure each fall which markers will fall to the next winter or the next storm.

On the other side of the drive is an old, brick one room school house.  Ann is close to her goal of beginning restoration of the school house this summer and turning it into a one room home.  I suppose there will be a bathroom with a door.  It’s probably eight or nine hundred square feet and has potential oozing from every brick.  I suggested a bedroom loft at the back, which would give over the entire first floor to living.  I think it will make a great little home for a young couple starting out.